by Aldrea Alien
Marin lowered her bow. “Dylan? How?”
Dylan dissipated his shield. “Well—”
“I might be able to answer that,” Tracker said, poking his head out from behind Dylan.
The hunter’s eyes widened for a second, then narrowed. She raised her bow, though made no move to draw back the arrow. “You—”
“Were expected,” Katarina said, tugging on the other woman’s sleeve. “This is why I suggested going this route instead of heading north.”
Marin turned to eye the hedgewitch. “You knew that bastard was coming after us?”
“Not after. With. Seeking refuge for a hunted spellster, wasn’t it?” Katarina asked of the elf.
Tracker inclined his head. “Close enough, my dear hedgewitch. I asked her to linger so our…” The man wrapped an arm around Dylan’s waist. “So that my husband might—”
“Husband?” Marin blurted. “Really? You two got married?”
Dylan fingered the earring. He nodded, his cheeks warming.
“You can do that here?” Katarina asked. “Two men? An elf and a human even?”
“Obviously?” Tracker replied, his brow creasing. “Is there somewhere you cannot?”
Katarina laughed. “There are all sorts of places. Tirglas frowns on unions of the same gender and there are a number of kingdoms where a human marrying an elf is seen as lowering themselves.”
“Like Udynea,” Dylan mumbled. Given that quite a number of the elves in the empire were slaves or had ancestors who once were, it wasn’t a big stretch to imagine most Udynean humans would turn their nose up at those who chose to marry the elven men and women they’d fallen in love with.
“I see,” his husband murmured before a small smile tweaked his lips. “Well, fortunately, we are not heading for any of those lands.”
“So,” Marin said. Whilst she no longer held her bow at the ready, she still eyed Tracker as if expecting to need the weapon at any second. “We went all the way to Wintervale for nothing?”
“Not for nothing,” Dylan replied. If they hadn’t gone there, the hounds would’ve eventually sniffed them out. He’d gotten lucky facing them in a confined space where they were forced to come at him in small numbers. Out here? They would’ve easily slipped through his defences. “We avenged the tower.”
“You did?” Katarina gasped. “How? I thought your king was responsible for—”
“No,” Tracker interrupted. “The hounds’ orders come from another. He was the one who sent the pack to kill innocent people.”
“Was, huh?” Marin mumbled.
Tracker’s lips flattened into a grim smile. “Indeed, my dear hunter. No one threatens my husband’s life and lives.”
The hunter’s brows shot up at the declaration. “Sounds like something big happened when we left. You’ve got to tell me.”
Tracker wrinkled his nose. “Another day, perhaps. We will have plenty of time on the way to explain everything. I recommend we cross to the opposite bank at Riverton. Perhaps even procure passage upriver to expedite our northern journey.” He flashed Dylan a warm smile. “But that would depend largely on how you handle being on a boat, yes?”
Dylan nodded, although he couldn’t fathom why he wouldn’t be able to handle travel aboard one of the many river-going vessels he’d glimpsed on the way to Wintervale. But there was something else he needed to do before they travelled much further. “Madam Hedgewitch.” He dropped to his knees before Katarina. “There is a favour I must ask of you.”
Katarina stepped back, her face fighting to restrain a grimace. The act only served to make her look pained.
“Speak to the Coven for me,” he continued. “I know I can’t become a full hedgewitch unless…” He glanced at Tracker. “I don’t care if I never do. Being an apprentice will suit me just fine.” It was something he could do, a purpose that didn’t involve taking people’s lives.
“O-of course,” Katarina stammered. “There’s no need for you to kneel. We always welcome those who wish to take up the mantle and are willing to learn. But do you have any idea what an apprenticeship will entail?”
Dylan nodded as he stood. “I think you’ll find I’m well acquainted with quite a number of their duties.” Although their time cataloguing what they found in the old dwarven forge had been amazing, he knew that most apprentices spent their days copying texts and translating foreign reports. Very few spent their days trotting across the continent in search of more unexplored ruins. That was fine by him, he was rather sick of wandering.
“Then it is settled, yes?” His husband returned to his side and once again wrapped an arm around Dylan’s waist. Albeit, this time Tracker laid his head on Dylan’s chest. “We are leaving Demarn for good?”
Nodding, Dylan draped an arm around his husband’s shoulders. “For Dvärghem,” he murmured into the man’s hair. For home.
Midnight had come and gone. The soft glow of lingering moonlight leaked through the leaves, flickering through the windows that lined one side of the tiny hallway of their treetop home. Tracker smiled at the display as he sauntered along the passage.
He’d never had a home before. Strange, the thought of knowing this place belonged to them, that he wouldn’t be expected to leave or pay for another day’s lodgings. What did he care that it stood perched on the branch of a massive tree? Or that reaching it meant a climb of several hundred feet because an apprentice hedgewitch didn’t get lodgings further down the trunk? It was theirs.
Tracker was about to enter the bedroom when the warm flicker of candlelight from the study caught his eye. Working late again. He shook his head, grimacing as his hair tickled the tips of his ears. Always in his books was his dear husband. If he’d known he’d marry such a man…
He probably would’ve started looking a great deal sooner, if he was completely honest with himself.
Tracker crept to the open door and, yes, there was his darling husband.
Dylan sat at the very same desk he’d taken Tracker on during their first night here. All hunched over his work with his back to the world as the quill scritch-scratched its way across the parchment. It seemed almost sinful to disturb him.
Nevertheless, Tracker crossed the room, his every footfall silent.
The quill paused, just for a heartbeat. Long enough to let him know he’d been caught out.
The hurried scritching returned. “Yes, love?” How easily Dylan spoke the word. Enviously so. Although Tracker knew what he felt for the man—had become painfully aware of growing increasingly smitten with the spellster after watching him singing and dancing amongst the wild lavender—quantifying it with such simple words didn’t seem to do those feelings justice.
Tracker halted at the man’s side. “One day, I will discover how you do that.” He’d always been so quiet, but even sneaking didn’t work with Dylan. Not now they’d grown accustomed to each other’s habits.
He peered at the man’s work. Papers sprawled across the desk, a few were pinned down by the rune-inscribed pendant Marin had bought his husband back in Whitemeadow, a time that seemed very long ago.
His husband finally lowered the quill and grinned up at him. The candlelight glittered across those dark brown eyes. The faint hint of Dylan’s pupils melted into the surrounding inkiness, but Tracker swore he could almost make them out. “I always know when you’re near.”
He coaxed Dylan’s head back a little further, his thumb caressing the smooth skin at the spellster’s throat. “Is that so?”
Their lips met. Not the hurried collision of mouths and tongues seeking to stoke an already roaring desire for more, but instead the gentle sweep of skin against skin, just as soft and unrelenting as the ocean upon the shore. Even after all this time, it left him breathless and dazed, uncertain where they became two separate beings.
They parted to breathe and he pressed his lips against Dylan’s forehead. Such completeness. More than he’d ever known. His free hand caressed his husband’s shoulder. He didn’t know what he would’v
e done if he had lost this.
“Are you going somewhere?”
His gaze dropped to where his husband had wormed his fingers beneath Tracker’s belt, the one securing the infitialis dagger. He hadn’t worn it much in the three or so months they’d spent in the Dvärghem capital, but recently… he rather felt as if someone was looking over his shoulder whenever he left their little treetop home. “Been.”
His husband’s dark brows rose. “Doing what?”
“Nothing of import.” His stomach twisted as he spoke. It wasn’t a lie, though. Nor, did he have any secrets for him to keep from the man. Just his fear of shadowy threats.
Unlike Dylan, Tracker was under no delusions that the hounds would stop chasing them purely because they’d crossed a border. It would just make things a little difficult for a time as the hounds’ new master, whoever they were, acquired the proper authorisation to hunt them.
But that alone wasn’t substantial enough to concern his husband. They may have to leave this peaceful existence, but it could take years or it could be tomorrow. Until then, until he caught even the faintest whisper of the hounds entering Dvärghem, there was no point in both of them worrying. “Did you truly not hear me leave?” Tracker grinned. “We were caught up in our work, yes?”
“Well, yes. I—” A yawn cut off any further talk. Dylan rubbed at his face. “I’ve been trying to get these pages transcribed.”
And running yourself ragged doing so. The hedgewitches hadn’t been precisely as welcoming as Katarina had believed—and wouldn’t unless Dylan gave up all intimacy with Tracker—but he had been inducted. They offered Dylan an apprenticeship, one that would never be completed for the rest of his life. And one that Dylan readily accepted. That meant he was at the beck and call of every hedgewitch in the capital. “Did you at least eat?” He searched the table for any signs of the evening meal he’d brought in some hours ago.
Chuckling, Dylan unearthed the empty plate from beneath a pile of parchment covered in ink splotches and the man’s distinctive spidery scrawls. “Yes, mother.”
Tracker shook his head and drew his husband closer, almost coaxing the man out of the chair. “Dylan,” he purred, deliberately enhancing his coastal accent and grinning as a tiny shiver trembled through his husband’s body. “It is late. Come to bed.”
Dylan screwed up his nose. His gaze slid to the parchment. Several pages, covered in a more legible version of the man’s handwriting, lay to one side. “I need to finish this. The Coven expects me to be done with them tomorrow. It’s just a few more.” He rifled through the pages, counting. “Five… six pages tops.”
Which would be another hour or two in his current state. “No.” Tracker grabbed the chair arms and hauled the seat around. “You are coming to bed now. And you are staying there until dawn, even if I have to tie you down.”
His husband’s grin took on a suggestive twist as Tracker hoisted him from the chair to his feet. “Oh? Keeping me from my duties now, love?” He draped his arms over Tracker’s shoulders and clicked his tongue in a most disapproving fashion. “What would the Coven say?”
He shrugged Dylan a little higher, dragging one of the man’s arms over the back of his neck. “No doubt, they would use it as a means to ram home the point as to why they prefer their hedgewitches to shun intimate relationships.” Tracker made for the bedroom, half carrying his husband’s very much uncooperative form. “In this case, perhaps, they would find my ‘seduction’ preferable to you falling asleep in your work.”
Dylan stuck out his tongue and made a long flatulent sound.
He pushed the door to their bedroom wider with the bump of his hip. “So very eloquent, darling.” They made it to the bed, where he gracelessly allowed his husband to land. “However will I formulate a rebuttal?”
Laughing, Dylan sat up, clearly watching him in the gloom. “I could give you a few ideas.”
“Yes?” Tracker knelt to undress the spellster. The gods knew the man would climb into bed boots and all if left to his own devices. “Well, since you are feeling so very helpful tonight, light a candle for me.”
There was the loud snap of the spellster’s fingers and a flame came to life on the wick several feet away.
Show off. Having dealt with the man’s boots, he stood and found himself neatly snaffled by his husband. Their lips met, soft and teasing. Dylan tipped back, coaxing him to follow.
He did, perhaps a little too eagerly, judging by the amused quirk of Dylan’s lips. Still, he climbed onto the bed, straddling his husband, their mouths barely parting.
His husband latched onto his rear. Dylan’s hips rose, rubbing them together.
Tracker moaned into his husband’s mouth. The constant low hum that Dylan always set off in his body grew, his desire running sharp and strong. He’d never met anyone who could affect him so quickly and intensely quite like Dylan did. When they first entered this house, they had spent almost the whole night exhausting themselves in each other and now…
Well, now simply was not the time to indulge. “Stop tempting me,” he groaned whilst trying to pry his husband’s hands free of his rear. But his hips, having their own mind about what he should be doing, ground against Dylan’s.
The fingers busily moulding his rear tightened, bordering on painful. “No,” Dylan growled, fastening his mouth onto Tracker’s neck.
He grunted, unable to keep the grin from his face. “You need sleep.”
His husband released the hold on his neck with a sharp pop. That was going leave a mark. “I’ll sleep better after riding you.” Again, his husband’s hips lifted. Unlike Tracker’s own attire, the soft fabric of the spellster’s robes did nothing to hide Dylan’s arousal.
Tracker swallowed, his trousers had already grown that little bit too tight. “So greedy,” he said, chuckling. He’d never been one to deny himself what he desired, and the urge to strip his husband and do as the man wished only grew stronger with each passing breath. Intensely so. “Fine,” he managed around a groan. “I concede. But it is going to be quick.”
Dylan cupped the back of his neck and drew him down onto eagerly waiting lips. His husband’s hand slid between them, tugging at Tracker’s belt. “I like quick,” the man rasped against Tracker’s mouth.
His husband said the same thing about slow, too. In fact, Tracker had come to the conclusion that Dylan didn’t care what they did, as long as it involved the both of them and that was a rather terrifying and intoxicating thought. Truthfully, he enjoyed the simple way he could be with the man, watching his husband derive pleasure from the most innocent of touches. It was also somewhat of a relief, for he would eventually run out of tricks but, with Dylan, using such knowledge was never a requirement of their lovemaking.
Their clothes were shed swiftly, hitting the floor in a crumpled, tangled mess. Tracker knelt next to his husband and ran his hand up Dylan’s chest, his fingers slipping into the hair adorning the man’s torso. Not as thickly carpeted as some, but certainly so when compared to himself. The skin was rather unmarked also. No scars, no blemishes, barely more than a freckle or two. Just a seemingly endless landscape of ivory that rose to greet his touch.
Except when it came to the man’s neck.
He traced the too-smooth patch at the spellster’s throat, before caressing a stubbly chin with his thumb. Slowly, his fingers moved on to the earring dangling from Dylan’s right ear. His husband had never removed the tiny dagger ever since their first night together as a married couple.
Even though Dylan had gifted him with a marriage band at the first opportunity—a thing of dwarven design made out of dark wood inlaid with bands of opal that currently hung on a chain around his neck—the infuriating man expressed no wish for any other adornment, claiming that single piece of silver was enough.
His gaze slid over Dylan’s face whilst he toyed with the earring, skimming the glowing pink hue of the man’s cheeks to seek out a greater treasure. Something deep in his chest fluttered as he found the spellster’s
pupils. So difficult to distinguish from the richly dark colour of the man’s irises, like tiny secrets waiting to be unearthed. Now they were blown wide by the hot spark of desire and the dim light. Such a wondrous sight. And to think he’d almost lost all of it.
His husband’s lips, swollen from kissing, parted. “Track?” he whispered, the name leaving on a shuddering, breathless note.
Tracker grinned. He had admired for far too long. “How was it that you wanted me?” It was a game, this asking what his husband desired. Although, there were times his dear spellster surprised him. Untried in some respects the man may have been when they first made love, that did not make him an angel. No matter however much he professed otherwise.
Dylan tilted his head to one side. A wry smile twisted his lips and scrunched the cheek pressed to Tracker’s palm. “Present would be a start.” Concern furrowed his brow. “Are we thinking heavy thoughts again?”
He shook his head, causing the tips of his hair to tickle his ears in a most annoying manner. “Not too heavy. It is just, sometimes, this seems somewhat surreal.” This peace. He’d never known it’s like before. “As if it is all…”
“A dream?” his husband finished.
He nodded. It did indeed feel like a dream. One he feared he would wake from and never find again. That thought haunted him some nights where he couldn’t stand to close his eyes for more than a moment.
Dylan shrugged. “It’s not too bad, as far as dreams go.”
The man would get no argument from him there. And safe. At least now the Coven had stopped using his husband to help test some black powder capable of letting an ordinary person explode rocks and the like as easily as any spellster. Of all the things he could’ve assumed those runes they’d discovered in Demarn could’ve been, he hadn’t even considered it being a explosive formula. “Or maybe we died back in the Pit and this is our afterlife.”